Sociologists and anthropologists have long been fascinated by the place of gift giving and reciprocity in constituting communities. Drawing on ethnographic research in the Pacific, Mauss argued against the idea that gifts are ‘free’ in the political economic sense of an absence of money changing hands. Instead, gifts represented ‘total social facts’ because of the social bonds formed around them. National blood supplies should largely rely on altruism because, as Richard Titmuss famously, and successfully argued, because of the failures of economically rationalist models to promote sufficient supply. As with any theory, critics have pointed to cases in which this isn’t the case, however I was reminded of its explanatory power when I read this op-ed on the tax rules around charity at ABC:
“A number of banks, corporations and different levels of government have donated a million dollars each, but a lot of the money collected came from the pockets of ordinary Australians, reinforcing the maxim ‘if you want charity, go to the poor’. Of course, wealthy people don’t get wealthy by giving their money away. But many who achieve wealth are keen to give back to the community, and research shows that those with greater financial capacity give more and more often. However, rather than making spontaneous one-off contributions, they like to plan their giving.”
(my emphasis) The piece then goes on to explain how ‘Prescribed Private Funds’ have been used to structure giving by the wealthy, which then prime minister, John Howard, “announced ‘would have the object of channelling funds … to isolated acts of relief, including public funds for the relief of one individual or family or a community adversely affected by a natural disaster.” Of course, in case you haven’t realised by now, the impetus for the op-ed was the Victorian Bushfires and concern that “as the severity and frequency of bushfires in Australia appears to be increasing, a more focused and long-term approach to philanthropy in bushfire relief is warranted …”
In other words, the role of the state in this case is quite explicitly one of harnessing monies – the commodity produced from ‘alienated production’ as Marx might call it – and channeling it into programs that will strengthen social bonds. The process of giving doesn’t compute in a neoclassical economic framework without some attention to the politics of exchange. The fact that giving to registered charities is ‘tax deductible’ suggests that states are agnostic about the optimum level of charitable giving because the moral difficulties in asserting a level of ‘optimal’ giving run counter to the basic ideals of liberal government.
One can only imagine the cries of ‘Communism’ and ‘Central Planning’ if the government were to set a cap and/or floor on the level of charity.
—
This is all a very roundabout way of saying that the underlying logic of the Federal Government’s emissions target – as opposed to a ‘cap’ – is completely anathema to government as we know it.
We’ve some robust discussions about this in the past, including accusations that I want public engagement for the sake of it. But essentially, the way emissions trading permits are going to be allocated, central planners in Canberra have determined our optimal response to climate change. If you haven’t read Richard Denniss’s discussion paper from November last year [pdf] and/or you’ve been living under a rock since then, you may not realise this.
Richard’s motivation for writing it was quite simple: the targets proposed in the White Paper are not just counter to the commitments required for a safe climate, they spit in the face of what international negotiations have been leading towards over the past decade and a half. We’d effectively be putting a 5 bullets in the revolver and taking it for a spin if such targets were adopted globally (instead of, say, 2 with a target more consistent with the science), putting the welfare of those living on coastlines at tremendous risk, and ensuring the destruction of countless ecosystems.
Everywhere along this chain of reason are questions of value, such as how much should we value our present welfare at the expense of future generations (quite a lot, if public apathy is any gauge)? There is of course a place for economists in determining ways to minimize wasteful expenditure. Waste is, after all, the zero degree of value: which is why the ‘lowest hanging’ abatement fruit should get attention like energy efficiency and solar thermal research. Indeed, economists have an important role as expert gatekeepers of welfare rationality and ensuring that our climate response is maximized.
However, failure to recognise – or indeed an active disavowal of – the underlying social impulses for climate change action (concern for ecosystems, climate refugees, damage to land values etc.) is not just a recipe for apathy, but disempowering; as the growing list of organisations concerned about the Federal Government’s response suggests. Another line of enquiry into waste and utility could be traced back to Thorstein Veblen, who saw the social bonds of an emerging ‘leisure class’ as those driven by ‘rivalrous emulation’ of those wasting desired objects. The point was not, for Veblen, the distinction between waste and value as neoclassical economics understood it (optimal efficiency) but about who was allowed to waste. His was a political critique from someone alienated by the emergent middle classes of the late 19th Century; however, the ‘invidious distinctions’ (between the working and leisure classes) he saw reverberates from the McMansions in Campbelltown to the outskirts of Brazil. The underlying social logic is the same with both ‘battlers’ and ‘developing country’ residents: the role of government is ensure more people have more income to ‘waste’ in this way.
The point is not so much, in a puritanical manner Veblen might approve of – and one followed by Clive Hamilton – to argue for new ways of policing this boundary for moral reasons. Instead, it is to recognise that climate change brings up these problems of waste in a new way: via the values we place on the world-at-risk by climate change. It strikes me that all the table thumping about the political realities of climate change needs to recognize, above all, that if politics is indeed the art of the possible, then ensuring that community groups, local governments, businesses and others with an interest in promoting collective action should have incentives for doing so. And, more importantly, that they may need to do so by harnessing objects that may seem ‘wasteful’ to Martin Parkinson or anyone else gazing from the other side of their desk. Of course, none of this should preclude assessments about the utility each activity plays in the national effort – ie. every project should still be commensurable; but ffs let people who take the risks of climate change seriously make their contribution count above our Federal Government’s politically impotent efforts.
So as the Victorian State government is the latest organisation forced to rethink forced to rethink policies
“… including subsidies for solar farms and panels and a shift to a hybrid car fleet, arguing that they will not contribute to any additional greenhouse gas cuts under Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s proposed Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme…”
… I’ll leave it to the Victorians to assess whether those policies should be recognized on the national carbon accounts as contributing to our Kyoto target in some form or another.
I’d like to have that same right as a New South Welshman and Sydney-sider, which is why I signed the GetUp petition.
Elsewhere: John Quiggin comments:
…in the CPRS as it is, and in any alternative that might plausibly exist, the target is bound to be too weak. So, it is important to allow scope for voluntary action to improve on the mandatory targets.
I’m pretty sure I’m just repeating something that most people already know, but for the sake of the argument I’ll make the point again.
Currently, there are a number of reasons to reduce emissions (as an individual, a family or a business). The two most signinficant are concern for the environment and lower energy bills.
So far, those motivations have not led to emissions reductions in line with what the science recommends. Most people do not care enough about climate change to actually do anything about it.
The point of a carbon trading system is to simplify the signals to people. Instead of appealing to their sense of community or resopnsiblity for the environment, carbon trading reduces the whole issue to one of price. So even if you are a climate sceptic, you have a strong financial incentive to reduce your emissions. Even though some people who are currently up to their elbows in voluntary action might find this ‘disempowering’, there is a better chance that you will get the whole community acting to reduce emissions if you go at them through their hip pockets than if you rely on education and appealing to their consciences.
The problem with the proposed CPRS include a low target and inefficient handouts to selected industries. The issue of voluntary action having no additional effects is an inherent feature of a cap-and-trade scheme at the national level. If you have a trading scheme with a binding national cap, the effects of private actions will always be limited to a financial benefit to the person that reduces their emissions.
There are two options I can see: make it possible for voluntary reductions to be recognised in the the ETS; ensure that voluntary reductions are not counted.
The first simply reverses the current proposal, so that people who generate “non-tradeable RECS” can choose not to donate them to the government. I’m not sure how this could work simply because so much of what people do voluntarily is nigh-on impossible to measure at any reasonable cost. If you drive less that helps, but counting it at an individual level is tricky. How much of the change in your driving is because of higher petrol prices from the carbon price (belongs to govt) and how much to is your voluntary contribution (belongs to you)?
The latter is similar but from the other side: the scheme should assume that changes not causally linked to the ETS are voluntary and cannot be included in it. After a few years we’d see this very clearly in a set of “bogus numbers” being used for private emissions that are higher than the actual numbers. Again, allocation problems abound.
The obvious problem with both is that they assume people will reduce their emissions. What happens if the overall change is the other way due to some combination of apathy and “hotter is better” denialism?
My personal solution is the brutal one: I accept that there’s no way to count voluntary reductions. So I reduce where I can, but I also buy RECS and keep them. Call it “being personally carbon neutral” if you want to, or just call it “driving the price up for everyone else”.
@required
The whole point of the post is that the CPRS doesn’t do that, in fact no emissions trading scheme instituted by any government has successfully managed to do that yet. If I were a Popperian philosopher of science, I might say that this theorem has been ‘falsified.’ In much the same way as an industrial designer has to consider his factory in his designs, an economist must consider the legislature when designing a scheme. Surely when the plane can’t even get off the ground – despite repeated tweaks and modifications – you need to go back to the drawing board.
@moz, interesting take. “The obvious problem with both is that they assume people will reduce their emissions.”
I’ll just point out that I don’t assume ‘people’ will, just that government and quasi-government bodies assume we’re living under carbon constraints and reflect that in their decision-making. I’m thinking of the National Energy Supply Regulator specifically here who, despite all the studies on energy efficiency, just approved $15bn of new poles and wires.
The other point that needs to be made here is that the signals, while simple, are not sufficient to drive change. $4/wk on electricity bills, $2/wk on gas and bugger all on petrol simply won’t do the job. And these figures are based on the starting carbon price of $20/tonne, which is unlikely to be maintained any time soon given the CPRS price’s 100% linkage with CDM prices.
Yes, these amounts will begin to bring GReen Power up to the affordability level of coal-fired power but not enough to encourage the broad-based behaviour changes we all agree are needed. As Richard Denniss has argued, it also assumes we’re all economically rational and keep an eagle eye on our weekly utility spend. Of course, the one we do keep an eagle-eye on – petrol – won’t have any price signal at all so count out the possibility of price-based change there. Any change drivers make to smaller or electric cars will be by definition, voluntary.
Another thing to be said is that in fact the price signals will be fairly opaque to most people. The GST shows on every bill you get and its a simple 10%. But no one will know which products are going up because of their emissions content unless they’re prepared to become interested in what’s going on – another dubious voluntary action!
Unless the scheme is prepared to actually do the work and set a target, we’re going to have to depend on ‘voluntary actions’ – which encompass state govt & business, as well as individuals – to do our work for us.
“but ffs let people who take the risks of climate change seriously make their contribution count above our Federal Government’s politically impotent efforts.”
Would you still have this position if the Gov’t set cap was higher than that required than what the science told us was required? There would surely be some who didn’t think that the scientific consensus was enough, and your arguement for individual action to be additional to the cap seems to still hold.
I’m not as widely read as you dk.au, but it seems that the arguement for individual action follows the following logic.
“I don’t have a responsibility to reduce my carbon emissions. But I want to.”
Let me expand.
We all (individual, corporate, Gov’t, etc) have an interest in stopping this world of ours from burning up. We therefore have a responsibility to make sure that doesn’t happen. The Government has decided that the most effective policy tool to achieve this is through a cap and trade system (we’ll leave the carbon tax debate aside for the moment).
This structural response does not dissolve individuals of their responsibilities to act. Everyone, including individuals, and corporations, industry, etc, must work together to achieve reductions.
Of course, the problem occurs when the cap is too low. And that is the problem we have.
It’s time we stopped wasting resources on this debate and started thinking and lobbying harder for a rise in the cap. This is where Richard Dennis has created a sh*tstorm and diverted attention away from the real issue.
Incidentally, the figures below come from Voluntary Carbon Markets Association
Yes, it getting pretty concerning when you see the state and local governments asking “well, what the point of EVERY single measure we are taking”.
I accept the argument that volunatary only wont cut it, motivation -wise, I certainly do. However, I hear of lot of people saying “there’s no way to factor voluntary cuts in” – and frankly, I just don’t accept that. I find the case most unconvincing.
If we can measure the impact of voluntary action (and generally we have solid measures, and lets even be conservative when doing it); then surely we can just subtract that figure from the next years overall national allowable emissions under the CPRS.
That way, voluntary action will make ‘CPRS emissions’ accordingly more expensive per tonne.
All that said, I do agree the CPRS alone would work better, and solve many of these concerns, if the cuts were just higher. I can indeed see that once you “swamp” the voluntary sector in terms of proposed cuts, the motivation to contribute goes back in to the system indirectly.
But as its stands at 5% – we’re just making it easier for the big polluters not to change anything.
hrgh, the game of lobbying for a cap in line with the science is over and the other guys won. This is why Richard Denniss has created the shitstorm he has. The political reality seems to be that we don’t want to swallow the pill of structural change to the economy, because some version of the litterbug argument seems most appealing. Anna Bligh’s decision to ‘back coal companies over carbon scheme’ captures this perfectly.
what Aussie Oskar said about how the incentives will translate.
Sorry, link was buggered. Try this -
Voluntary Carbon Markets Association and look for the Featured Article – CPRS needs to accommodate Voluntary Action. (there seems to be a problem posting link addresses that end with a digit?)
I’m waiting for someone to tell me how we can get from where we are now to zero in 20 annual steps. That is, steps on average equivalent to a 5% decrease of the current emissions.
Given that the shit is likely to hit the fan with dramatic climatic disasters or even irreversibles by the 2020s, that’s about half as fast as I’d really like to see it.
The problem is that the necessary political will is only likely to come if we actually experience some said disasters, not where no-one powerful cares, but affecting directly the centres of power as such.
Otherwise, sorry, we are just pissing in the wind.
Good post, though, dk.au – very informed and thoughtful.
Yeah Brian, Ive often wondered how thing’s would stand if it was the US about to lose all its lowlands instead of Bangladesh and the Pacific.
Mind you – New Orleans was probably more fun when it was above sea level.
The problem with the “we need a disaster” is that we’re already having them, but climate change doesn’t sign its work. So there’s always other explanations.
I fear that the sort of disaster we’d need to get dramatic political change is more like an autumn full of category 5+ hurricanes running up the east coast of the USA than, say, a really bad bushfire season after a ten year drought. Remember, this is Australia where traditionally seven years out of ten have been “droughts” and three years have been “normal”, so there’s already a very skewed perception of the climate.
Add in a political cycle that regards “after the next election” as the epitome of long term planning (for things that will actually happen) and adding a new government department as “radical change” and you have a recipe for pretty much what we have now… a genteel shuffling of seating while the captain announces that the inconvenience will only be temporary.
Brian: “I’m waiting for someone to tell me how we can get from where we are now to zero in 20 annual steps. That is, steps on average equivalent to a 5% decrease of the current emissions.”
Let’s first just get an idea of what zero emissions looks like. We can make up the 20 steps afterwards.
What do we have? A situation where national emissions are “energy sector, 70%; agriculture, 15%; other forms of land use, 7%; industrial processes 5%; waste, 3%”.
The energy sector emissions divide into electricity and transport. So you’re 70% of the way there if you have zero-emissions electricity and zero-emissions transport. Apparently nuclear is ruled out and we don’t believe in clean coal, so your electricity will have to come from renewables, perhaps persistent sources like geothermal and tidal, along with networked intermittent like wind and solar. If you intend to still have motorized transport, it will either be electric, biofuel, or hybrid.
In agriculture, it’s methane from livestock and nitrous oxide from fertilizer. It’s easy enough to change the livestock base, e.g. we all switch to kangaroo meat a la Garnaut. I don’t know what we can do about fertilizer except not use it.
Land use, industry and waste I’m fuzzy about, but the majority of that is land use, so biochar and reforestation should get us a long way.
For a 20-year plan, you then just make these substitutions incrementally.
There is nothing to stop anyone who might wish to do so from trying to calculate the economic effects of such a direct plan. Obviously it will be quite expensive and we will be foregoing various opportunities to make money in emissions-intensive ways. People should face up to these consequences and not be inhibited by them in discussion. If a zero-emissions Australia costs 5 or 10% of GNP, and if you think a zero-emissions Australia is absolutely necessary, so be it. People who want to close down the coal industry should proceed in the same fashion. The answer is not to campaign for people to prioritize non-economic values; the answer is to actually estimate the cost, and then argue that it is a cost that should be borne.
I keep geeting surprised by the range of reasons people people come up with to make ignoring the impactt of voluntary action seem like a great idea. the main reasons include:
1)Its a design feature of ETS schemes – get over it
2)Voluntary measures havent worked for the past 15 years so its time to move on
3) Its too hard to measure voluntary – so get over it
Lets take them in turn
The design feature argument is a strange one. in the textbooks the whole point of an ETS is to solve a problem so no one ever really put much thought into how an ETS would work if you deliberately plugged in the wrong target. There is no reason that you cant have an ETS with a target that ratchets down in response to volutnary action – the textbooks just assumed we would have both perfect knowledge and the political will to use it at the beginning of the scheme – alas
Second. Of course voluntary action has not, and will not, be enough, but neither will a 5 per cent target. Why do people keep suggesting there is a zero one choice to be made here? we can have the best of both worlds (including the motivational features referred to in the post) if we have a ‘cap and slice’ type scheme
Third. Its not that hard to measure. Of course its hard to measure perfectly, but again, we arent in the textbook here, its reality. My preferred model for measuring these days is to just use the baselines that are in the treasry modelling and if the household electricity or transport sector generates fewer emissions than expected then lower the number of permtis issued the following year by that amount.
Finally, there is the whole ‘voluntary is too small to make a differnce’. well if thats the case, why is the government willing to take so much political pain rather than jsut fix it?
The fact is voluntary means any action not justified on the basis of a self interested response to a price signal. It therefore includes not just individuals buying greenpower but local governments changing their street ligthing patterns, state governments spending hundreds of millions on soalr farms and the federal governmetn spending $4 billion to install insualtion in other peoples houses.
these policies are not ‘market mechanisms’ but under the proposed CPRS the beneficiary of these will not be the atmosphere, but the big polluters. Thats why the government is unwilling to tackle this issue. The polluters wont let them ensure that it is the atmosphere who gains when the public purse gets opened…hence the big rethink in the Victorian (and presumably every state) government.
“The polluters wont let them ensure that it is the atmosphere who gains when the public purse gets opened”
This sort of conspiracy thinking is, I suspect, wrong. The government is made of adults and they accept responsibility for their own decisions. The targets were determined, by the government, with an eye on votes and on economic consequences. The polluters lobbied hard, as one might expect from businesses facing extra expenses of millions of dollars, and they were heard, but the buck stops with Rudd’s cabinet.
I hardly think it is conspiratorial to suggest that the Rudd Government seems to be in the thrall of the polluters. Lets have a look at the CPRS scoreboard.
1) Lower targets than anyone possibly imagined (most were worried they might go as low as 10 percent)
2) More generous compenation than anyone imagined (the stationary electricity industry getting compensation!)
3) unlimited importation of permits from other countries and a prohibition on the export of permits
Its hard to imagine the polluters getting a sweeter deal.
So if its not opposition from the polluters that is preventing the PM from taking the $4 billion of our money he spent on insulation and giving the benefits to the atmosphere what is it? As i said above, if the stakes are low, why let this issue keep distracting the government from selling their bigger picture message? Why not just fix it and move on?
richard, I think Guy Pearse’s Quarterly Essay goes into the “shadowy world of the greenhouse lobbyists”. Not sure whether this extends to their activities with the Rudd government.
Penny Wong bangs on about ‘the science’, but when Kelvin Thompson last week said the science demands cuts of 80% by 2050 Wong said that to change the targets they would have to take them to an election for a new mandate. I believe Rudd said the same thing last year. So the 60% by 2050, which is quite achievable if we get the thing at least heading in the right direction by 2020, can’t be changed unless the people approve.
If you look at how the ‘science’ of 60% was established, from memory it came from a weekend seminar Rudd conducted in Brisbane when leader of the Opposition, which fed into the Labor platform and also into the terms of reference of the Garnaut Review. So the ‘science’ was determined by God knows who speaking loudest and God knows who wielding the pen to record what the meeting decided at a select seminar run by a political party. That’s what we are stuck with until the platform for the next election is decided.
I’m betting there won’t even be a weekend seminar next time.
mitchell porter @ 13, yes that’s what you have to do, I guess, as a paper exercise in the first instance. But when Monbiot in his book Heat in 2006 tried his detailed 90% by 2030 he had to abandon free access to air travel, to drastically re-engineer public transport and the road system, plus from memory abandon the wasteful method of food distribution via overheated supermarkets with open fridges. So he ended up with a personal tradeable carbon allocation for every person, which is probably unadministerable.
What I’m saying is that if we are to go to zero ASAP, and assuming we have the consensus about need and the political will to do it, I’m not sure what method or what mix of methods around ETS, taxes or mandatory constraints would be required. Philip Sutton said the other night that there was an outfit in Victoria that had worked out a methodology for getting to zero emissions in 10 years. I haven’t had time to check it out.
dk.au linked in the post to “a target more consistent with the science” which turned out to be a Garnaut paper that came out when I was away last year and hadn’t caught up with yet. After a quick look, and subject to correction, Garnaut’s stabilisation paths seem to leave far too much carbon in the atmosphere for far too long to be regarded as a “safe” solution.
So dk.au, I’m not clear whether you agree with that estimation and if you do what strategies would produce a safe climate in time. You’ve certainly wrestled with the problems of achieving significant change in the real world, but I’m still not clear how the thing can be successfully tackled. I appreciate (I think) the fact that your post was making a more limited point.
richard @ 14 – wrt to point 1 “its the way its designed”. Under the CPRS organisations like electricity companies whose emissions are directly tied voluntary behaviour have two ways or reducing their emissions to fit the cap:
- Generate electricity in a less CO2 polluting manner
- Reduce consumption and increase energy efficiencies by their customers
The latter can be a profit increasing choice for companies. There are companies that already do this (eg subsidising capital costs for energy efficient devices – such as replacing electric heaters for gas heaters) because the incremental cost of producing more energy and beefing up the grid especially for peak periods is more than the revenue they will get for that electricity. The CPRS will add even more incentive for companies to run these programs.
If you separate voluntary action from the scheme then you introduce a disincentive for companies to encourage less consumption from their residential customers as that will make it harder for them to make their targets.
(15) “The government is made of adults”… in some cases, barely.
In a sign of Her Queensland Blighness’ crushingly pragmatic sympathies for coal company profits and royalties, and unionist jobs, over serious regard for carbon emission reduction niceties, and future generations conditions of existence, the newly appointed Climate Change and Sustainability minister is not yet 30 years of age. There’s nothing out there to suggest she’s particularly a prodigy, wise or accomplished beyond her years, or exquisitely and inarguably suited to the portfolio. More a classic boilerplate LaborMatesInc jobs for the girls hack really.
The Minister’s freshly minted BA in politics and journalism might have been just the right qualification for the media advisor roles in the turbine room of queensland cabinet that have been her career so far, but, IMO, an engineer, scientist, or economist, with a swag of experience, someone whose idea of numbers isn’t drumming up a majority vote in caucus, would have been better suited to the future-shaping job. That’s if the Bligh govt was serious about dealing with climate change on anything but a political level, which is a big and very dubious ‘if’. (To the youngster’s credit she’s enrolled in a Master’s in Envronmental Law, nice bit of career planning that. Call me cynical, but I reckon her real qualification, in the inbred labor Nepotism’R'Us way, is being the partner of the longtime Mackenroth/Beattie/Bligh chief spin guy. )
Not that Her Blighness doesn’t rate Climate Thingies as important, quite the opposite, She Herself appointed Mr Bligh Himself ‘The Big Guy’, Head of the Office of Climate Change, so young Kate’s career is in very good hands. As will be the Olde King Coal’s bottom line.
Any bets on seeing a utility scale, hundreds of MW, renewable energy power station or two get funded, or will we have to be satisfied with getting the easy propaganda sell, (but somewhat boutique in the overall scheme of things,) of subsidised solar hot water systems, which was pretty much all there was in the election pitch? That’s why we got a young media hack for climate change minister, to act as camera-ready beard for the old svengali himself, a PR cover up job is all it was ever meant to be, IMO.
That’s very good, Danny, and I’m sad to say probably true.
I’ve been trying to work out how I can get into the shell-pink ear of my local member, the still very young lawyer and right-hand fixer, Andrew Fraser, one of a bunch of Labor members who wouldn’t be in parliament without Green preferences.
The solar hot water thing, which is basically a PR move, which covers for environment-destructive mainstream policies, which provide short-term economic gain (jobs, royalties) but destroy wealth in the longer term (stuffing up productive land, CO2 emissions acting on climate change and destroying the Great Barrier Reef.)
So Queensland policies provides no opportunities for individuals to do good for the environment and actively enshrines and protects the activites of organisations that are doing harm.
In this it is very much in line with what dk.au is saying about Federal government policy. It determines on our behalf what the reduction targets will be and prevents any citizens who might want to go beyond this from doing so.
Basically a con and a disgrace.
In the post dk.au said:
This leads me to the reason for my rant above about the science.
Garnaut in his stabilisation scenarios uses the standard, mainstream, pre-Hansen concept of climate sensitivity, wherein doubled CO2 leads to a mid-point temperature rise on 3C, plus or minus 1.5C. He’s aware that anywhere between 2C and 4.5C is dangerous, perhaps catastrophic and constantly refers to feedbacks, tipping points, and fat tails on the upside risk as outlined by Weitzmann. But his main orientation is to talk about a scenario where, with a bit of luck, we’ll be OK.
If, with Hansen, you see 6C as the midpoint expectation for 550ppm and 2C as the momentum already in the system rather than 0.6C, it changes the whole ball-game. All the discourse about discounts and marginal utility where the assumption is that people in the future will be better off economically than we are suddenly changes to the assumption that they won’t, that the future is likely to be catastrophic economically. Garnaut kind of admits this “if considerable weight is given to the bad end of the probability distribution of outcomes from climate change”, except that he doesn’t say “catastrophic”, simply that “utility may be lower”. Yeah, right.
So the Government is putting us in a straitjacket, where we can’t get ahead of them, and can’t use citizen action to demonstrate that a different future is possible. Which might, incidentally produce a political constituency for more dynamic change.
It’s OK to doddle along behind the international pack and use borrowed funds to directly fund consumption, rather than create an environmentally sustainable infrastructure for the future.
This is surely reprehensible.
End of rant, I’ll go have a Bex and a lie down.
Brian:
The only point of leverage I can see, now that South Brisbane green-vote tide, and any potential preferences leverage over Anna, has gone out with the influx of Tory Towers types ( the plan is for 25,000 or so to move in), is on your boy Fraser, who, @ > Labor.
Now that the Ronan experiment has proved beyond any shadow of a doubt that there is nothing in it for the greens to be Labor familiars, and Drew’s Greens Eminence Gris schtik has surely finally and forever come unschtuck, the Greens can and must move on to a new practical paradigm which might well include, shock, horror, talking with the major party that actually had a 44c kwhr solar feedin tarriff, and renewal energy industry leader aspirations, as stated policy. And no coalmines on farmland. And the No Traveston shibboleth.
There is an internal logic to a conservative/conservationist alignment, (even if just on a low-hanging-fruit “Green is the new Black” lifestyle choice for libs basis,) compared to Drew’s futile ” I gave labor preferences cos they promised they would make some environmentally friendly policy statements”. As we saw, all there ever was in the labor bag was the CrazyCrazyCrazy OutTheyGo HotwaterSystems’R'Us commodity bulkbuy retail margin exploitation opportunity, and a footpath in a forest somewhere which might muster some rural votes up north ( and back on with traveston and coal etc). Ok, there’s a few things like uranium, and land clearing, to sort out with torydom, but it’s gotta start somewhere, and LaborMatesInc has proved to be the very definition of nowhere for the environment.
What I’m saying is: before you go after The Boy Fraser’s pink and shell-like, have a word with Larissa about having a word with pollard. Greens preferencing the strangely environmentally aware ( ok so his solar panels were on backwards) tory in Mt Cootha, (where his vote is large enough to plausibly gives him a chance of getting over the line, needing only half the greens voters to preference him), in exchange for tory’s not running in Brisbane Central and South Brisbane, (where the tory’s don’t have a chance) is my outrageous suggestion.
You’ll be going to Avid this evening for the Pearce piece? See you there.
… ( damned greater/less-than signs mis-acting as html code)…that should read, para 1, …
“your boy Fraser, who, being less than 1% ahead of Pollard, must be acutely aware that that the combined Libs and green vote is significantly greater than his.”
Danny, but until there’s a more democratic electoral system in Queensland there’s not really a lot The Greens can do in the state (2.6% difference in the vote means 20% difference in seats? 8% of the votes means 0% of the seats?) Having compared systems (I’ve lived and voted under FPP, STV and MMP) I have to say that until you have proportionality you don’t have meaningful democracy.
Aside from that, I’d be happy to see The Liberals become more green, but looking over the Tasman right now I’m not even slightly optimistic that even if Turnball was PM (rather than say Costello) he would be able to make the Liberals deliver on the green promises. On the other hand, it’s not as if we have a lot to lose right now. The ALP is delivering for the coal industry, so given the choice between giving Rudd another go and seeing if the Liberals are willing I’m very tempted to go with Malcolm. Any other Liberal… a definite no. If they don’t talk the talk before the election there’s no way I’d trust them to have an attack of common sense afterwards.
moz, I’ve heard Malcolm say multiple times that we need to decarbonise the electricity grid entirely by 2050. I don’t think I’ve heard that from any other politician, even a Green.
Danny, you may have already rushed off to the Avid Reader. If so you’ll be exactly 24 hours early. I’m still not sure I’m going.
Brian, 2050 is a political never never land. The only thing that really counts is annual carbon emission reductions.
And the CPRS kills carbon neutrality. It has now emerged that the CPRS is also greatly impacting local government across Australia in their efforts to go carbon neutral.
Local government has in fact led the way on climate change, with several already announcing plans and commitments to go carbon neutral, and many others seriously considering doing so too.
Unfortunately, the CPRS has created doubts and confusion about what carbon neutrality means at Local Government level. [link]
Kevin Rudd and Penny Wong have been captured by the fossil fuel and other polluting industries and the big end of town.
Agreed, Peterc.
That’s what Guy Pearse was saying.
Further, he was saying that while the heavy polluters are squealing about going off-shore, that’s in fact what some of them are doing with their new facilities, ironically to places that are supplying renewable energy. So we are paying them to stay here until their facilities are redundant at which time they will close them and we won’t be any closer to preparing for a renewable energy future.
Brian @ 18, yes the Garnaut link was not so much an endorsement of an ‘ideal’ but a sacrifice to pragmatism. The word is that the 15% in fact will get up in the end, something that the murmurings from the pre-CPH/COP15 negotiations in Japan earlier this year would certainly point to.
How that links up with a global agreement is all beyond me, but I’d imagine the argy bargy at COP15 come December will see an Umbrella group scrum pushing for that line.
Forget ppm targets, we’ve got economies to rescue!
Thanks, dk.au. I’ve been reading the darned thing. This bit is interesting: